Languages, Identities, Agencies: Intercultural Lessons from Harry Potter
Titel:
Languages, Identities, Agencies: Intercultural Lessons from Harry Potter
Auteur:
Phipps, Alison
Verschenen in:
Language and intercultural communication
Paginering:
Jaargang 3 (2003) nr. 1 pagina's 6-19
Jaar:
2003-05-01
Inhoud:
Matters of language use and identity have dominated cultural and literary theory in recent years. This paper brings these perspectives together in a critical reading of recent modern language and intercultural communication literatures. One approach views languages as powerful and complex goods, and identity formation as inherently unstable. It sees identity formation through languages largely in terms of human agency. To this view is counterposed an alternative argument in favour of languages as agents in themselves, as bearers of power and as imposers of scars. These alternative readings thus legitimise the dual idea of languages and linguists as agents that mark and are marked. Study abroad, accordingly, is not neutral but could lead to an identity formation of either kind (agentic or victim). In order for identity formation to be agentic in character, power has to be acknowledged, struggled with and claimed. Language learners, as intercultural agents, exercise their human properties and power in order to engage with unstable and destabilising sets of experiences.
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